For days after the killing of Charlie Kirk, there was nothing in the news but Charlie Kirk. Rightly so – it was a volcanic political event in the history of the US. Even for those who had never heard of Charlie Kirk (many people), it is now apparent how bright the fault line was that was illuminated by his assassination.
So I was struck by an article in the Washington Post and other outlets on 13 September that described a number of instances of people being fired by their employers because of comments they posted in the aftermath of his killing. Some of these comments were relatively benign – the sort of provocative one-liners that you might imagine someone making at a dinner party after a few drinks (or even before). Yet some of these people were terminated by their employers the next day.
Free speech has never really been entirely free – most people sort of know this anyway. But now it is downright expensive, especially in the age of X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, which are the new permanent markers of history – indelible and unsparing.
What you say on these public forums is not only open for all to see (even if you think it is private), but is carried onto your CV, into your workplace and (perhaps most dangerously) into your company’s customers’ field of view.
It’s a little worse than that, because you can be quoted out of context or malevolently misquoted to the extent that the stain never goes away and the impression is never corrected – a Scarlet Letter for life.
Institutional retribution
Consider then the institutional retribution that has been meted out in the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting, each one based on someone’s personal post, notwithstanding whether they were carefully composed, overwrought, or just foolish:
• Middle Tennessee State University Assistant Dean Laura Sosh-Lightsy was fired after posting on Facebook that she had “ZERO sympathy” for Charlie Kirk and saying “Looks like ol’ Charlie spoke his fate into existence.”
• University of Mississippi executive assistant Lauren Stokes was fired for resharing “hurtful, insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death. In particular, the reshared post described Kirk as a white supremacist.
• Football team Carolina Panthers communications coordinator Charlie Rock was fired for social media posts about Kirk’s killing. Among the posts was one with a photo of Kirk and the caption “Why are y’all sad? Your man said it was worth it.”
• MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was fired on 11 September, the day after Kirk was fatally shot at a Utah university.
• Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that multiple pilots employed by American Airlines have been immediately grounded and removed from service.
• A Secret Service agent, Anthony Pough, wrote this on Facebook following Kirk’s murder and has been placed on leave pending disciplinary proceedings: “If you are mourning this guy … delete me. He spewed hate and racism on his show” (Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn has demanded that he be terminated. It is unlikely to go any other way).
• Cumberland University in Tennessee announced the firing of a staff member and a faculty member on 12 September. The employees made “inappropriate comments on the internet related to the tragic shooting of Charlie Kirk.”
• Florida Atlantic University President Adam Hasner announced that a tenured faculty member had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into his comments regarding Kirk’s assassination.
• Investigations have also begun into members of the military and homeland security agencies including the US Coast Guard and the US Navy.
• Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas announced that he will conduct “an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behaviour”, after a public school in Clay County announced the departure of one of its teachers.
• University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce announced that an employee had been let go after he or she “re-shared hurtful, insensitive comments on social media regarding the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk.”
• Andrew Hermann, a communications professor at East Tennessee State University, was also fired. He posted on Facebook that Kirk “reaped what he sowed”. He also shared a news article about Kirk’s positions on gun control, with a caption saying, “You can’t be upset if one of the deaths [is] yours.”
Reasonably mild
I don’t know about you, but I think that these comments, at least the ones reported, seem reasonably mild even in their worst interpretation – there is a lot uglier stuff out there.
Let’s rewind to the pre-internet era. Back then, if you were in HR or management, you might hear rumours about what a person thought or said, but there wasn’t a scrollable, permanent record of every hot take. An employee might say something controversial over lunch. People might judge him. But his job? That was relatively safe.
Even then, most companies – particularly in places with strong labour laws – would shy away from termination based purely on what an employee said about politics. The last thing a CEO wanted was a reputation for firing people because they held the “wrong” views.
Not any more.
Now, with every phone being a recording device, every tweet a public statement, and every comment section a battlefield broadcast, the barrier between personal beliefs and professional consequences has crumbled.
Then there is this
And then there is this – Clemson University in South Carolina issued this statement condemning any posts glorifying political violence after three faculty members were flagged for their comments.
“We stand firmly on the principles of the US Constitution, including the protection of free speech,” the statement reads. “However, that right does not extend to speech that incites harm or undermines the dignity of others. We will take appropriate action for speech that constitutes a genuine threat which is not protected by the Constitution.”
“…undermines the dignity of others“? The absurdity of this should be clear to all, but apparently it is not, and it is a direct descendant of cancel culture.
The entire point of free speech laws is that you should be free to say things that may be unpopular or hurtful to someone, somewhere. The law is meant to protect that very right, above all. It is wasted ink without citizens being able to offend. History has long been darkened by dictators punishing critics (including imprisonment and worse) who “undermine” their “dignity.”
How did the US come to this?
[Image: Charlie Kirk, photo by Matt Johnson from Omaha, Nebraska, United States, Creative Commons licence]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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